D R Newitt Recruitment
Quality Assurance Manager
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Quality Assurance Manager – Food Industry
Location: South East England
Industry: Food Manufacturing
Employment Type: Full-time
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced and proactive Quality Assurance Manager to join our food manufacturing business in the South East of England.
This is a key leadership position with responsibility for maintaining and continuously improving our food safety, quality, technical and compliance standards. You will play a critical role in ensuring that our products consistently meet customer expectations, legislative requirements and industry best practice.
The successful candidate will be passionate about food safety and quality, with strong knowledge of HACCP, food legislation, auditing and recognised food industry certification standards.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and manage the site’s Quality Assurance and Food Safety systems, ensuring they remain effective, robust and continually improved.
- Own and maintain the HACCP food safety plan, including hazard identification, risk assessment, control measures, monitoring, verification and review.
- Ensure compliance with relevant UK food safety legislation, customer requirements and industry standards.
- Manage and maintain certification requirements, potentially including BRCGS, SALSA, ISO 9001, ISO 22000, IFS or other relevant recognised standards.
- Prepare the business for external certification audits, customer audits and regulatory inspections, ensuring a high level of audit readiness.
- Lead internal audits, inspections, investigations and corrective/preventive action programmes.
- Investigate quality issues, complaints, non-conformances and incidents, identifying effective root causes and corrective actions.
- Develop and monitor quality KPIs, trends and improvement plans, reporting findings and recommendations to senior management.
- Work closely with Production, Technical, Operations, Purchasing and Supply Chain teams to embed a strong food safety and quality culture.
- Ensure raw materials, suppliers, production processes and finished products meet agreed specifications and standards.
- Manage supplier approval, supplier performance and associated risk assessments.
- Oversee environmental, microbiological and product testing programmes where appropriate.
- Ensure effective traceability, product withdrawal/recall and food safety incident procedures are maintained and regularly tested.
- Provide training, coaching and support to employees to ensure food safety, hygiene and quality responsibilities are understood and consistently applied.
- Keep up to date with changes to food legislation, customer requirements and emerging industry risks.
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About You
We are looking for someone who combines strong technical knowledge with practical leadership skills and the confidence to challenge and influence at all levels of the organisation.
You will ideally have:
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- Proven experience in a Quality Assurance/Technical/Quality Management role within the food manufacturing industry.
- Strong practical knowledge and experience of HACCP principles and food safety management systems.
- Experience working with recognised food industry certification schemes such as BRCGS, SALSA, IFS, ISO 22000 and/or ISO 9001.
- Experience successfully managing external audits, certification audits and customer audits.
- A strong understanding of UK food legislation, food safety requirements and industry best practice.
- Experience conducting internal audits, risk assessments, root-cause investigations and corrective action.
- Excellent attention to detail and a structured, evidence-based approach to problem solving.
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence colleagues across the business.
- The confidence to challenge processes and behaviours where food safety or product quality could be compromised.
- Experience of leading, developing or mentoring quality/technical teams would be advantageous.
- Relevant food safety, HACCP, auditing or technical qualifications are highly desirable.
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